W. Patrick McCray

W. Patrick McCray (born 1967) is a historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He researches, writes about, and teaches the history of science and the history of technology.

McCray grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania and later attended graduate school at the University of Arizona. He is the author or editor of five books on the history of science and technology; topics include the effects of technology on astronomical practice, the activities of amateur scientists during the Cold War, and activities of scientists who promoted radical visions for the technological future. In 2005, McCray co-founded the Center for Nanotechnology in Society [1] with a grant from the National Science Foundation. Until 2016, he led a research group focusing on the history of nanotechnology. In 2011, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and, in 2013, of the American Physical Society. McCray's 2013 book The Visioneers won the 2014 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize from the History of Science Society. In 2016 and 2017, McCray was a "Faculty Expert" and speaker for the World Economic Forum's meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

• Keep watching the skies: The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age, Princeton.
• Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambitions and the Promise of Technology.
• The Visioneers. How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, ISBN 978-0-691-13983-8.
• Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture edited with David Kaiser.University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, ISBN 9780226372914